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Definition of acedia in English:

noun

I would, however, still be feeling something - melancholia or acedia, ennui, despair, nameless dread or another such psychic state historically lacking effective treatment.

Faced with this situation, Smithson felt that the task of the artist was to cultivate a thoroughgoing acedia: ‘The artist should be an actor who refuses to act’ and ‘Immobility and inertia are what many of the most gifted artists prefer.’

R. R. Reno's connection of an overblown fear of suffering with acedia or spiritual apathy in ‘Fighting the Noonday Devil’ (August / September) gave me an ‘aha!’